On Friday March 12, the Texas State Board of Education not only made history, but they also changed it.

In establishing a new set of education guidelines that will be taught to current and incoming students for the next decade, the state of Texas decided to put a more conservative spin on what is and is not important for the next generation to learn.

How does this affect you?

Because of these changes, the text books you and your children will be picking up in the next year or two could be the very same ones that have been dictated to be produced by the Texas State Board of Education.

For those of you who haven’t noticed, Texas is a pretty big state.

Some estimates put the total population of Texas at 25 million people.

Of those 25 million, it is estimated 5 million of those citizens are students attending both public and private schools in Texas.

That’s a lot of students that will need a lot of textbooks.

Textbooks that will be printed in bulk and will make it into not just the hands of children attending school in Texas, but also children attending schools in the other 49 states.

So what’s the big deal with Texas changing a few things in history?

The big deal is the Board of Education has an agenda to remove historic figures, replace many with conservative heroes and to ignore issues that they feel might be confusing for children of any age.

First off, they have removed Thomas Jefferson from the books.

Forget about what he did with Sally Heming, Jefferson was one of the founding fathers of this nation, he established the University of Virginia and was the third President of the United States.

Guess he really wasn’t that important after all, it’s probably a good idea to cut him out.

I mean it’s not like he wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence or anything like that.

Well that’s not really that important, so they’ll probably cut that part out too.

They are instead focusing more on former President Ronald Reagan who, though a very popular president, he’s still not on Mount Rushmore.

I could rant and rave about all the things that they are changing, but in the end it won’t do any good.

Texas is a big state, not just in size but in population too.

If they want to change history they’re going to because they can.

Ron Allman, associate professor of journalism and the advisor of The Horizon, actually lived in Texas while growing up and he has a lot of good stories about the education system.

Allman told me he once had a teacher who told the class that the South won the Civil War.

When someone asked why he said that, he told them “because we’re still here.”

I have to admit, it’s pretty hard to argue with that logic, but that’s not going to stop me from doing it.

It’s time for Texas to wake up.

The South lost the Civil War, Thomas Jefferson is more important than Ronald Reagan and if you teach children about sex and gender they all won’t turn out to be transsexuals.

Please remember this is the same state that was so kind to give the nation George W. Bush.

Next time Texas feels the need to share with us, let’s all just do each other a favor and say no thanks.